Conventionally, it is general to arrange, in two devices which are independent from each other, a decoloring function of decoloring an image printed on a recording medium such as a sheet and the like with decolorable material using a decoloring section and a printing function of printing the image on the recording medium.
However, if such a decoloring function and a printing function can be arranged in one single apparatus, the installation space can be reduced, and therefore, an apparatus (hereinafter referred to as image forming apparatus for short) equipped with the decoloring function and the printing function has been proposed.
In such an image forming apparatus, in a case of forming an image with a toner melted by heating at a fixing temperature, a toner image on a recording medium is heated, pressed and fixed by a fixing section which is heated through energization to a heater thereof. Further, if the decolorable material is a decolorable toner of which the color is decolored when being heated at a decoloring temperature, the decolorable toner image printed on the recording medium is heated and decolored by the decoloring section which is heated through energization to a heater thereof.
In a case in which the fixing section and the decoloring section, which are heated through energization to a heater thereof, are respectively arranged, and a sheet conveyance path used for fixing an image and a sheet conveyance path used for decoloring an image are respectively arranged, it is possible to carry out printing operation and decoloring operation simultaneously.
However, the situation in which the printing function and the decoloring function are operated simultaneously is very limited. For this reason, when a standby mode of the fixing section and the decoloring section is started from a power saving mode, it is not a good idea to energize the heaters of the fixing section and the decoloring section simultaneously.
Thus, it is desired to suppress unnecessary power consumption by controlling timing of energization for the heaters of the fixing section and the decoloring section.